


Mesmerized

by belgardebells



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Futuristic-Modern, Loneliness, One Shot, Solipsism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 16:25:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16350080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belgardebells/pseuds/belgardebells
Summary: Clarke doesn't know if the man on her viewing screen is real. He could be a figment of her mind, a creation of technology, a hologram playing out in a code of zeroes and ones. But whatever he is, she's been unable to think of anything else from the first moment she saw him.





	Mesmerized

Clarke gave him a name, the same way she'd given herself one. The band on the bottom of her viewing screen wrote his name address as 15-403-9Y, 9Y for short, but Clarke didn't like that. It took her a long time of watching him, maybe weeks - she couldn't be sure - to come up with a name she liked.

She chose _Bellamy_.

She would stare at him for hours, curled up on her couch in the living room, wearing soft fleece clothing with a thin blanket, the night city and its thousands of dazzling lights a background to her viewing screen. Occasionally, she'd have to get up to answer the apartment door when it chimed with a delivery. There was never anyone there, of course ... just her package on the delivery belt that emerged from the wall outside. That was how she got everything; food, clothing, cleaning supplies, entertainment. She'd punch in its code on the electronic manual built into the wall beside the door, and a few days later, the manual would _ding_ and announce her delivery.

There were several other stainless steel front doors on her hall, stretching so far down she couldn't even see the end, but she wasn't really convinced anyone else lived behind any of them. She'd never seen another person in real life. Not a single one.

She didn't care about that anymore anyway. She had in the beginning, but now she only thought of Bellamy _._

Logically, he wasn't real. If she thought in terms of what was realistic - which she did her best not to - then he was just a code like everything else. She wasn't even entirely sure  _she_ was real. Sometimes, it was difficult to understand what was going on beyond her, or even what was going on within. She couldn't remember herself ever beginning, couldn't remember starting anywhere that wasn't this fancy apartment where she lived now ... couldn't remember a family or friends or knowing anyone. But some of the people on her viewing screen had those things sometimes.

Bellamy didn't. He was only ever alone, and she knew this because she watched him constantly, every single time he was on without fail. There was a viewing screen in every room of her apartment, so she could listen to him and watch him wherever she was, whatever she was doing.

She was currently in the porcelain bathtub, the large window next to her opened to let in a warm, late night draft. The lights all through the apartment were set to dim because she felt more relaxed that way. She had floral scented candles glowing along the wall of the tub, flames flickering in the breeze. She was shaving her legs with the LaZer-RaZer - a razor that singed hair follicles with a laser so that hair stopped growing for weeks at a time. Bellamy had reviewed a few days ago and gave it a positive review, because that's what he did: he was a Reviewer, same as her.

He reviewed food, cookbooks, and home appliances mostly, and Clarke ordered every single item he used, even the ones he didn't like. She wanted to know how he experienced life, and the only way she could do that was to use everything he used. Sometimes she liked the things he didn't, and she would have a pretend conversation about it with him - out loud, alone in her bedroom lying on her back surrounded by fluffy blankets. She talked to him all the time as though he was really there, conjuring up responses he would give, falling in love all on her own with the version of him she saw on the screen.

She herself reviewed pieces of entertainment, things like artwork and sculptures, drawings and books - and she released her episodes online every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which were opposite dates to Bellamy's. She convinced herself that if Bellamy were real, he'd watch her episodes the same way she watched his. It made her laugh, thinking about how odd it would be if they were both real, and both thought the other _wasn't_ , and yet both were a little smitten with the other.

It wasn't possible, though. Or at least, it wasn't probable. She knew either everything was possible or nothing was, which was a difficult concept for her to grasp, but she tried. She got many hits on her reviews, but she didn't really know what that meant. They were very unlikely hits from real human people like her, if that's even what she was. It frightened her to think about it, to imagine that thousands upon thousands of machines - or robots, or whatever existed out in the world apart from her - watched her reviews, knew of her location, knew what she looked like, sounded like, talked like. It was so scary that she usually didn't think about it at all, but sometimes thoughts slipped through. Sometimes, she couldn't hold them back in time. Bellamy was her only escape from whatever existence she was living.

The LaZer-RaZer was burning her leg, turning pale skin pink, so she shut it off, the quiet tone abruptly stopping, Setting it down between two of her candles, she leaned back in her tub, water sloshing gently around, and she watched Bellamy on the viewing screen next to her just below the window. Her head dropped back against the wall, and she blinked softly, lifting her hand to stroke her pointer finger over his smiling face. Water dripped from the screen, a rainbow of colours distorting his face, but Clarke didn't care about wiping it off right then.

She dropped her hand back into the water and splayed both fingers gingerly over her knees, drawing a slow path up her submerged thighs to her hips, gently across her belly, imagining her hands were his. She didn't know about much, didn't know about what her existence was, or if there was any meaning to it, or if she even existed at all, but she did know that she craved touch like nothing else. Her fingers curved delicately into her abdomen, a deep chasm widening in her heart, reminding her of how lonely she really was.

She wondered if Bellamy was based off a real person who had actually existed at one point or another, or if he was merely a program and nothing else. Clarke was so lonely that she didn't think she'd even care. She'd call him 15-403-9Y if she had to, she'd blindfold herself around him just to keep to the illusion of there really being something other than her; she'd do it if it meant she was allowed to know what it was like - just once - to be touched by hands that weren't her own ... to be in the company of someone she could talk to for real and not just in her head.

Closing her eyes, she let out a long and deep breath, stomach tight, and lifted her hands from the water while Bellamy's deep voice drifted on in the background. She grabbed her towel from the floor - a pale yellow cotton one that Bellamy had reviewed a long time ago and purported to using himself (which she knew couldn't be true since he wasn't real and didn't bathe anyway) - and she lifted it over the bath to wipe off the viewing screen, making sure she could see him clearly again. She dropped the towel back to the floor, bit back her sadness, and sunk deeper into the warm, rosewater bath.

All Clarke's walls in her apartment were pale creams, yellows, whites, and beiges, her accent colours dark blues, maroons, browns, and greens. Bellamy's home was exactly the opposite - the same dark shades as hers, but on his walls; same pale shades as hers, but as his accents. Clarke didn't know why, but she liked that ... like maybe they were complementary halves or something ... like maybe something like that existed.

"This next product is from artist CG-957-8R," he said calmly, pulling up a toy gun that Clarke already knew of, one that shot cold balls of harmless fire into the air in any colour.

It was odd that _he_ should review it, though, considering it was a piece of entertainment and not a household item or food. She knew because she'd seen it in a flyer and had recommended it to her pyro viewers last week as a safe alternative to real flames while still giving the same thrill.

But of course, Bellamy was a program. He could review whatever he wanted. It didn't really matter.

"Usually I try out the product beforehand," he said, tossing it from one hand to the next, "but this just came in today, so I didn't have the time."

Clarke crossed her legs in the clear water, angling her body toward him.

"I only watch one girl on this thing," he said, tapping the camera with a smile, "and she recommended it not too long ago. She reviews entertainment, but she didn't review this one. She short-changed me," he said, grinning again, always in such a good mood. "So I thought I'd try it out myself. And hey - before I lose viewers, let me just say I'm not switching to an entertainment review channel. I'm still predominantly household and food. This girl just really made me want to check out this gun, so--"

He pulled the trigger hard, and a large ball of blue flames shot out, nearly as big as his head. Bellamy jerked away from it and fell back off his chair, out of view of the screen, the video shaking a little when he hit the ground.

Clarke laughed lightly, palms rubbing idly over the warm, wet skin of her arms.

"Well," said Bellamy, laughing to himself off screen, "that serves me right for not reading the instructions."

Clarke was smiling, close-lipped and content, and tilted her head when he rose back up onto his feet.

"See, this is why I don't review entertainment," he said, righting his chair before taking his seat and grabbing the packaging off-screen. "I'm better at cooking and eating than playing, I guess."

Clarke breathed deeply through her nose, dreamy smile on her face, and closed her eyes for a long few seconds before opening them to him as he scanned the instructions, mumbling them out loud to himself.

She did wish he were real. She did wish, deeply, that he wasn't a piece of code, or something her own mind conjured up to convince her she wasn't alone. She really did wish for all that, but she was also grateful. She was grateful that she got him at all, that she got goofy antics with a fire ball gun, that she got him during her bath time, and lunch time, and work time. She didn't have much in her life to be grateful for, but this man, this creation - 15-403-9Y - wasn't something she was ever going to take for granted.

"Oh!" he said brightly, looking from the instructions to the gun, cocking it and looking back to the screen with a smile. "You've got to set the pressure first. Sorry about that."

He adjusted a small knob on the side of the gun and shot it again, a stream of blue flames with strands of white streaking out. Bellamy went on and on about it, gleeful and excited, commenting that he would have liked to see 'the girl I watch' review it because he definitely would have liked to have a recording of her reaction.

Clarke stayed in the bath watching him until her skin was pruning, and still even then, until Bellamy was done his reviewing for the day and signing out. She dried herself off, put on lotion and pajamas, and climbed into her big white bed with her fluffy white blankets and her comfy white body pillow that she always pretended was Bellamy when she cuddled it.

"Night, Bellamy," she murmured, closing her eyes and holding the pillow close, snuggled in her blankets, and pretending he could hear her.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is nothing and I'm probably going to delete it soon, so if you liked it, you might want to download it. I just wrote it because I'm listening to Nuvole Bianche, and I'm a little sad and a little lonely, and those emotions + this song makes me think of ethereal, dreamy concepts. So have this sad thing. *throws glitter but in a lackluster way*


End file.
